WaSH as a maternal health issue: three perspectives from rural Uganda

Inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) knowledge and practices affect maternal and newborn morbidity and mortality. This article describes postpartum knowledge, resources, and practices in three rural Ugandan hospitals. A lack of WaSH resources was problematic for both staff and newly-birthed mothers who demonstrated a lack of knowledge about the appropriate use of WaSH resources and the links between WaSH and health protection. These results suggest that in addition to increasing the availability of medical interventions, basic preventative public health practices should be reflected in policy and practice integrated across the spaces inhabited by pregnant women to achieve improved maternal and newborn outcomes.     

‘I get together with my friends and try to change it’. Young feminist students resist ‘laddism’, ‘rape culture’ and ‘everyday sexism’

Abstract

Contemporary alarm about ‘laddism’ reveals what feminist research and activism has long-recognised; universities, like other social institutions, can be dangerous places for women. Research in the US and, more recently, the UK reveals alarming rates of violence, against women, the cultural and institutional norms which support violence and gaps in institutional responses. In the midst of this contemporary alarm about the university as a hotbed of laddism, there is a risk that the university – a site of potential empowerment and liberation for women (and men) – becomes re-positioned as a danger zone. The limited focus on danger and safety belies the potential of universities to enhance human freedoms through intellectual endeavour. We argue this progressive potential should remain centre-stage, as should university-based resistance to everyday sexism and laddism. This paper analyses accounts of young women feminists (n = 33) in UK and US universities. It explores their use of feminism and features of the university environment to resist and challenge oppressive cultures and practices. It argues that, despite encroaching neoliberalism and enduring sexism, universities continue to provide environments for engagements with feminism, enabling young women students to use feminism to resist and challenge sexism and to envision their feminist futures.     

Associations between Social Support from Family,Friends, and Teachers and depressive Symptoms in Adolescents

Approximately 20% of adolescents develop depressive symptoms. Family, friends, and teachers are crucial sources of social support for adolescents, but it is unclear whether social support impacts adolescents directly (principle-effect model) or by moderating the effect of stress (stress-buffer model) and whether each source of social support remains meaningful when their influence is studied simultaneously. To help fill this gap, we followed 1452 Australian students (average age at enrollment?=?13.1, SD?=?0.5; range: 11–16 years; 51.9% female) for 5 years. Based on our findings, each source of support is negatively related to depressive symptoms one year later when studied independently but when combined, only family and teacher support predicted depressive symptoms. Family support in all grades and teacher support in grade 8 to 10 but not in grade 11 directly impacted adolescent depressive symptoms 1 year later. Family support in grades 8 and 11 also buffered against the negative impact of stress on depressive symptoms one year later. Based on the unexpected findings, the most important limitations seem to be that the used instruments do not allow for a separation of different groups of friends (e.g., classmates, same-gender peers, romantic partners), types of social support, and stress. In addition, the high, nonrandom attrition rate with adolescents reporting less social support, more stressful events, a higher frequency of depressive symptoms, and/or being of Torres Strait Islander or Aboriginal background limits the generalizability of our findings. Summarized, our findings demonstrate that adolescents facing stress might benefit more from family support compared to their peers without stressful life events and that friends may have a weaker presence in adolescent lives than expected.     

Consequences of Involvement in Distinct Patterns of Adolescent Peer and Dating Violence

Typological theoretical perspectives suggest that the consequences of involvement in peer and dating violence may depend on the particular pattern of violent behaviors that youth experience and/or engage in. Yet few studies have examined whether distinct patterns of dating and peer violence involvement differentially predict developmental outcomes. Using two waves of data, the current study examined the prospective associations between distinct patterns of peer and dating aggression and victimization, identified using latent class analysis, and a range of potential developmental outcomes in a general population sample of adolescents in the 8th to 10th grades (n?=?3068; 46% female, 58% White, 31% Black, 11% other race/ethnicity). The findings suggest that, compared to youth involved in other patterns of violence, youth involved in peer and dating violence as aggressors and victims are at greatest risk for negative sequelae, although results differed considerably for girls and boys and on the outcome variable and comparison groups being examined.     

How Can Business Share Responsibility for Disaster Resilience?

This paper contributes to knowledge of disaster resilience policy implementation in Australia and proposes measures to strengthen partnerships between government and the business sector to enhance national disaster resilience capacity. In Australia, business makes a significant contribution to disaster relief and recovery. Even so, there are unexplored opportunities to enhance the role of business in disaster resilience, particularly through partnerships with government. The extent that state, regional and local‐level disaster plans engage business in disaster relief and recovery is described and their relatively less prominent involvement in disaster resilience is discussed. Examples of disaster resilience policies and their capacity to influence business practices to support disaster resilience are introduced with suggestions for how they can be enhanced. Some potential benefits and pitfalls of public–private sector collaboration are explored and it is noted that, in disaster resilience settings, these risks can be ameliorated through appropriate implementation.     

Does fraud trump partisanship? The impact of contentious elections on voter confidence

Fraudulent elections can reduce citizen trust in elections and other political institutions. But what about the impact of contentious elections that resolve successfully, leading to democratizing change? Do national movements toward democracy trump individual experiences with electoral manipulation? Using public opinion survey data collected before and after the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, we evaluate changes in voter confidence in electoral practices, political institutions, and democracy. Although national trends show increased voter confidence overall, subnational variation suggests pervasive partisan differences in opinions about election quality and institutional confidence. Remarkably, we find that direct exposure to fraud matters far less than anticipated; voters who were personally exposed to fraud felt no more or less confident than their co-partisans. We show that partisanship and the national electoral context may interact in ways that complicate the effects of democratizing elections, suggesting important avenues for future research.     

From rhetoric to reality: an NGO’s challenge for reaching the furthest behind

The guiding principle of Agenda 2030 is the commitment to “leave no one behind”. However, as the Millennium Development Goals experience has demonstrated, there remains a “rhetoric-implementation gap” where local stakeholders struggle to realistically respond to policies formulated at the global level. This article proposes a way forward for NGOs seeking to translate the rhetoric of Agenda 2030 into reality. It presents an integrated and multi-sectoral approach to meet the challenges of an NGO working to ameliorate the basic needs of women who are affected by HIV/AIDS and limited WaSH provisions in the impoverished rural community of Lyantonde, Uganda.     

The effect of human versus automated interaction on willingness to participate in government programs: The role of representation

Increased reliance on automated systems in government raises important questions about the impact of these systems on program participation. We look at the relationship between an automated application process and program participation through a representation lens. From a representative bureaucracy perspective, we examine whether gender representation increases participation intentions compared with interacting with an automated system. We also consider a political dimension of representation, investigating whether interacting with an automated system increases participation intentions among those whose policy preferences do not align with program goals. While we do not see differences based on gender representation in our survey experiment, we do find evidence that an automated system leads to greater willingness to participate among those whose policy preferences do not align with the program. These results provide insight into when automated systems may influence participation, suggesting a potential positive role among those who are not politically favorable toward a program.